Another Gun Argument – The Jews Argument

This entry is part [part not set] of 13 in the series Guns

Someone I’m friends with on Facebook shared a post by someone I don’t know named, Monica Bailey. The post is one of those with the photo of all the shoes of Jews from one of the death camps. We saw a display of these at the Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg a couple of years ago, and it is heart-wrenching. But, of course, nothing is reaching too low for the gun nuts, so that whole pile of shoes is just the result of the Jews giving up their guns to Hitler.

The claim this Bailey person makes (likely copied from some NRA article) is:

To all the kids that walked out of school to protest guns. These are the shoes of Jews that gave up their firearms to Hitler . They were led into gas chambers, murdered and buried in mass graves . Pick up a history book and you’ll realize what happens when u give up freedoms and why we have them.

Well, unfortunately, that’s not exactly the way it all played out, but the truth never stopped the narrative of a conservative gun-rights nut.

As it turns out, the German government that immediately preceded Hitler’s, the Weimar Republic, actually had gun laws tougher than the Nazis.

The German WWI surrender terms were very harsh (which, as any student of history knows, did help the rise of the Third Reich), In the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature passed a law that effectively banned all private firearm possession, including the confiscation of guns already in circulation. Later the rules were relaxed a bit by the Reichstag allowing private ownership but with a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them.

In 1938 Hitler signs a law that actually does the opposite of what the NRA and Wayne LaPierre (and hence our friend Monica) claim. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition…”¹

Besides, Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown University who studies the Third Reich, notes that the Jews probably wouldn’t have had much success fighting back. “Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?”²

What’s really amazing though is the response I got to comment explaining this and providing a link to the Salon article. I asked at the end of the comment, “Do you folks ever even try to be honest and accurate? Why do you post things are just wrong, just exactly the opposite of what you claim? What do you get out it? I’d really like to know.”

The response was, “Thanks for your response; however, I don’t need to be schooled. If you do not like what I post just delete and move on.” No attempt to support the claims made in the post; no attempt to refute the facts put forth in the article I referenced; and no attempt to explain why she thinks it is OK to post demonstrably false articles nor any apology for posting something historically inaccurate. Just a “leave me alone if you don’t like me posting lies to support a false narrative.” How the mighty United States has fallen.

1. “On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians),” Fordham Law Review, Volume 73, Issue 2, Article 11; Bernard E. Harcourt; 2004
2. “The Hitler Gun Control Lies;” Salon.com, Alex Seitz-Wald, 01-11-2013